


binary stars

by iwaichoomi



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Character Death, M/M, Medical Procedures, Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:35:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27588956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwaichoomi/pseuds/iwaichoomi
Summary: There’s this one patient who attends his daily check-up every Tuesday.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou & Miya Atsumu & Sakusa Kiyoomi, Hinata Shouyou/Sakusa Kiyoomi, Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 3
Kudos: 56





	binary stars

**Author's Note:**

> posted first on twitter so kinda reposting here?
> 
> twt me at @iwaichoomi

There’s this one patient who attends his daily check-up every week. Tuesdays, to be exact.

He’s one of those who has to keep their eyes checked after a surgery that took months of process before the initial surgery. And even after that, he still need to visit for his daily check-up.

Shoyo, or whatever Doctor Miya calls this patient, is a nice and bubbly man. He comes to hospital with a friend, he's always there with a scowl on his face despite Shoyo’s display of happiness every second of every minute.

There’s something about the patient that just... _shines_. Everyone would notice the glitters in his eyes behind his protective glass.

Sakusa Kiyoomi is one of his viewers.

“Do you happen to know where did I put my phone?” Atsumu asks, barging inside the glaucoma room while biting on his upper lip, both hands palming his white coat; searching and in hope of finding it.

Kiyoomi sends the doctor a glance and returns to his computer screen. “Ask Kindaichi. You left with him earlier.”

“I _know_!” Atsumu whines. And then he stops from searching at all to groan at the ceiling. He then turns to Kiyoomi, still grimacing.

“Can I borrow your phone?”

‘ _Morning, Kiyoomi_ ,’ he tells himself. ‘ _It's eight in the morning_.’

Kiyoomi halts from typing down the record of the previous patient to glare at Atsumu.

“What for?”

Atsumu rolls his eyes and steps forward to pick his phone.

“Flashlight. I just need to check my patient’s eye. I think the outer coat of his eyes _flicked_.”

Kiyoomi frowns deeply at that. “What?”

Atsumu rolls his eyes and finger quotes, “ _conjunctiva detachment_.”

Kiyoomi stares at the other ophthalmologist. When Atsumu just, having the audacity– _really_ , raise his brows suggestively, he gives up.

“Is conjunctivochalasis that hard to say?”

Atsumu snickers. “It was nice to say _seven years_ ago– I mean, if you can pronounce it straight and right then you must’ve beaten _the_ god lord iridocyclitis!”

“Oh, shut up!” Kiyoomi scoffs but there’s a lingering smile on his lips, faint, shy, and hiding.

Atsumu bids him goodbye, as if the patient’s area isn’t just outside of their offices.

The doctor pulls the open door wider to go out but before he step outside, Atsumu turns to Kiyoomi.

“Oh, Omi!”

Koushi, who puts a new chart of a patient’s record on Kiyoomi’s table, snickers at Atsumu.

“ _Again_ ,” Kiyoomi groans. “What?”

“I have this _special_ patient and I want him to go home as soon as possible– he gonna have his lasik surgery in half an hour– so I really need someone,” Atsumu then wanders his eyes to all of the doctors inside the office, “ _or anyone_ to check for his Snellen Chart test.”

“I would love to but I gotta go. Surgery schedule,” Koushi tells Atsumu. The former then pulls a rather large suitcase that's been on the corner since this morning, and waves them _bye_ and hopes that someone would take Atsumu’s patient for now.

“Can he wait after I finished with my patients?” Wakatoshi asks, a frown in between his brows. He looks genuinely worried.

Atsumu snorts. “You take _forever_!”

Kiyoomi sends glances between Atsumu and Wakatoshi, both trying to talk this out. He realized that he has a surgery scheduled after Koushi’s team, and Koushi’s surgery schedule will take atleast four hours.

Kiyoomi usually take hours of rest and meditation before a surgery, so it’s safe to say that he’s free. A patient’s Snellen Chart test won’t hurt his routine, right?

“Hand me his chart,” he tells Atsumu.

Wakatoshi blinks at him while Atsumu recites all of the apostles' names.

“Thank, Omi! I owe you one! And can you please send him to lasik room? I swear, I’ll buy you dinner for _real_ this time.”

Kiyoomi stands up and pick up his tonometer device, waving a hand towards Atsumu. “The chart.”

Atsumu steps outside and Kiyoomi walk around his table to walk out too, surprising Atsumu upon hearing him going out, too.

“Where you goin’?” The ophthalmologist asks.

“Everyone’s busy at the glaucoma room,” he explains. Atsumu walks towards the reception, presumably to take the patient’s chart.

Atsumu is still looking at him as he halts in front of the retina room, signalling that he’s going inside and Atsumu understands that. Kiyoomi leaves the door open.

He is busy adjusting the Snellen Chart when someone knocks on the door.

It’s Atsumu, followed by the special patient.

 _Oh_.

Kiyoomi, who has a job that consists of meeting lots of people, encountered more grumpy oldies and forlorn faces of those middle aged patients. So it’s a understatement that his lips break into a small, welcoming smile upon seeing the patient.

“Shoyo, I’ll leave you with Doc Omi,” Atsumu tells Shoyo with a pat on the shoulder. “Is that alright?”

“Yeah _m_ ,” Shoyo tells Atsumu. “I’ll be fine!”

Kiyoomi smiles wider when Atsumu turns to him, he looks like he doesn’t want to leave at all but he has a patient to tend.

“Tell Doc Omi everything, and give him the original copy of your card. He’s your doctor today so he’s gonna sign it. So don’t look for me _again_ , unlike what you did last week.”

Kiyoomi watch as Shoyo barks a laugh at that. And after that, Atsumu is gone.

Shoyo then turns to him, big smile and beaming.

“So you’re Shoyo,” Kiyoomi talks, like the usual way when he talks to his other patients.

“Yeah,” the male replies lightly. “I came with my friend Tobio, but he’s really interested watching the doctors tending to the patients outside that’s why he didn’t go with me here inside– he’s a optometrist. In London."

That surprises Kiyoomi. First of all, the friend looks young and second, Shoyo talks a lot. But it’s not unwelcomed. It is a rather change of scenery.

“He must be busy but he went here all the way from London to visit you?” He asks Shoyo as gentle as he could muster.

“He’s on a two-month break. He was supposed to spend it with his sister at South Korea but he found out about my condition,” Shoyo replies, smiling and looking content, of all things.

“So, I’m still _right_ ,” Kiyoomi tells the patient. Shoyo laughs a little at that.

Kiyoomi smiles again and takes the chart Atsumu left on the table, examining it.

He finds out that Shoyo’s surname is Hinata. He’s 27. He seems physically healthy and maybe, an athlete consider how good his statistic chart is. He’s stable. And consider how well built he is, plus the fact that he's wearing a too comfortable polo shirt with a official Japan Sports Association printed on it in small fonts.

And Shoyo, who suffered a retinal detachment which caused him a 8 hour long surgery a month ago, is having a mild-severe condition regarding his eye right now.

On his chart listed the scheduled check-ups for the past month, four in total, and they have dynamical results.

“11. 12. 11. 34...” Kiyoomi mutters under his breath, gnawing on his lower lip as he looks further on the chart.

It took two months of follow up check-ups before Shoyo undergone his surgery. He’s stable, his eyes not reacting to the silicon liquid they put on his eye, which they have to take out of his eye again, maybe next month, and another lasik surgery.

And he has lasik surgery schedule today.

Kiyoomi hums under his breath. This looks normal for someone who had a retinal detachment condition.

When he turns on the next page, just then he realized why Atsumu said he's special.

Hinata Shoyo, now that Kiyoomi remember, is that patient who had a special circumstance.

‘ _So he was that patient who had his retina all torn and almost impossible to save_ ,’ Kiyoomi thinks to himself.

Hinata Shoyo, 27, a man who majors in smiling and being bright, was a special patient since even the head doctors had a serious meeting regarding him.

Kiyoomi remembers that Doctor Daichi assigned himself to handle the surgery, with head doctors of every team to be his own team. Just for this man right here in front of him.

Somehow, that makes Kiyoomi nervous. He should be more gentle, than he already is.

He stands up and beckons for Shoyo to walk to the middle part of the room.

“Let’s start?” He asks which receives a nod. “I’ll turn off the lights at this side of the room, is it fine?”

Shoyo nods again, smiling. Kiyoomi turns off the light, the only light at the room being at the test corner.

“Can you take your glass protector off and stand here?”

When Shoyo stands a foot away from the draw line, Kiyoomi chuckles and pulls the other gently; positioning the patient at the right place.

When Shoyo is settled and chuckling again, Kiyoomi takes a neat white folder sitting on the surgical chair cushion.

“I need to cover your eyes.”

“Can I do it myself with my palm?” Shoyo asks. “Doctor Miya lets me.”

Kiyoomi snorts. “That’s because he’s lazy.”

He thinks that the laugh Shoyo lets out is so much worth of his arm straining from covering half of Shoyo's face.

•

Quarter to eight in the evening when Kiyoomi comes out of the operating room. After three hours of gruelling surgery, because the patient is in his sixties, he finally lets out a sigh he’s been holding for far too long.

The steel bench at the waiting area just outside of the hallway of the operation area is so inviting. And Kiyoomi almost give in if it isn’t for Atsumu’s voice, the doctor looking at him from the reception area.

The operation area is somewhat a private place, few people walking in and out even at the hallway, and since it's almost eight in the evening, only the guardian of the patients are waiting.

A guardian sitting on the steel bench looks like he wants to ask Kiyoomi about something, probably to ask about his relative, but Atsumu is now walking towards him.

“How was it?”

“Usual,” Kiyoomi's immediate answer. He then bites his lower lip when his eyesight darkens for a second, slowly turning dark violet. And then fades. Slowly.

“You look tired.”

Kiyoomi nods a little, couldn’t even manage a proper verbal answer.

Thankfully, Kindaichi comes out of the operating room, polite enough to ask the guardian himself. Kindaichi is really the best intern, after all.

Atsumu ushers him to the glaucoma room. Kiyoomi immediately walk towards the ophthalmic exam chair and flops down on it, sighing and groaning.

He hears Atsumu chuckling. It’s near.

Kiyoomi opens his eyes, albeit lidded from fatigue to look at Atsumu who is adjusting the chair’s upper part.

“A little lower?” Atsumu asks gently.

“Please,” Kiyoomi replies, chuckling a little.

After adjusting the chair, Atsumu takes a sit beside him, little space but enough.

“Roll over.”

Kiyoomi sends Atsumu a inquiring look. The latter shrugs, but pats his shoulder a couple of time to persuade him.

Kiyoomi groans but he follows, arranging himself on his stomach, his head turned away from Atsumu’s side.

And then, a palm digs on his lower back; soft yet pushing. _That_ feels good.

“Do that again,” he sighs out. Atsumu chuckles and did as he said.

Atsumu did it few more times, even massaging his upper back and his calves.

When Atsumu’s palm lands on his nape to massage the part where his shoulder and neck connects, he sighs some more and close his eyes.

“How was Shoyo?”

The question made Kiyoomi to open his eyes. He blinks, staring at the other exam chair few feet away.

“He’s a nice person,” is the thing Kiyoomi tells Atsumu.

Somehow, it feels weird if he tells him he thinks Shoyo is shining; bright like the sunlight. And soothing lukewarm whenever the sun sets.

It feels somehow nostalgic, like when the only light Kiyoomi sees is the sunlight trespassing from the little gaps of the curtain of his then toddler’s room instead of retinoscope’s lights he use for his patients now. He was just a kid back then. And he thinks he took those little thing for granted.

“Right?” Atsumu agrees. “He’s my favorite patient.”

“Hmmm.”

The hum is meant to be a reply. But as Kiyoomi’s mind turns a little, questions suddenly flooding his mind, the hums turns into a inquiring one, sounding like teasing.

Atsumu laughs at that.

“You’re _still_ the _prettiest_ for me, though.”

Kiyoomi blinks his lids slowly. He then turns his head around to take a better look of Atsumu’s face.

Atsumu is sitting against the light, but Kiyoomi can clearly see his face. There’s a soft smile on his face, very much different from the one he has earlier this day.

And Kiyoomi knows _very well why_ Atsumu has the audacity to look at him like this. _Why_ Atsumu has the audacity to talk to him so freely like he did earlier, and _why_ Atsumu had the audacity to take his phone without really waiting for his answer.

You can call them, for the lack of more complicated word, a couple. _Maybe_. Atsumu only takes him on dinner dates and they don’t even kiss.

But that’s enough of a reason, a pass, for Atsumu to act like this.

Kiyoomi deals with it. He tolerates it. He somewhat _likes_ the way Atsumu treats him, to be honest.

But.. he knows that as much as his heart skips a beat whenever Atsumu does something so loving is how much Kiyoomi is aware that he doesn’t grow when it comes to taking anything for granted.

As the guilt creeps his chest along with the fading imagery of bright smile and radiating laugh, the list of things Kiyoomi takes for granted gets longer.

He should invest more.

No. He _shouldn’t think_ he should invest.

“I’m kinda craving for some tenderloin tonight,” he murmurs, leaning more to Atsumu.

He feels his shoulder touching Atsumu’s thigh, and Kiyoomi wonders how is that _too much_ for Atsumu and how is that _too little_ of an effort on his behalf.

“Tenderloin?” Atsumu repeats with a laugh.

“Yeah. Lots of rosemary..”

Kiyoomi closes his eyes as he feels Atsumu’s fingers comb his hair.

They’re careful, scared, testing the water. And Kiyoomi thinks he can give that to Atsumu; letting the doctor continue doing it.

“Tenderloin, it is.”

Kiyoomi hums, and hopes that the thrum of apology of not giving _too_ much, _too_ enough, danced along that hum to at least ease himself.

That makes him feel more guilty than he already is.

“Drive me home?” He whispers, almost inaudible.

Atsumu, who always fail to send Kiyoomi home because he always rejects the idea of it, halts from threading his fingers through Kiyoomi’s curls.

“Uhm– yeah. That would be nice, Omi-kun!”

There’s that teasing tone again. And if Kiyoomi knows that Atsumu is just hiding his internal crisis because of the sudden willingness Kiyoomi is showing, he doesn't comment on it.

That night, he lets Atsumu hold his hand. And even if his mind is yelling at him to just snatch his hand away when Atsumu's starts to sweat, he just held it _tighter_.

•

Two months have passed, and here Shoyo is, in front of both Kiyoomi and Atsumu with a smile on his lips.

“I’m nervous,” the patient admits. “But not as much as my first surgery.”

“You’ll do fine!” Atsumu re-assures. “Doctor Daichi will take care of you.”

“I’m in good hands, then,” Shoyo beams at them.

Atsumu shoots finger guns to Shoyo before walking a few feet away to check his chart. While Atsumu is at it, Kiyoomi turns to Shoyo who seem to can't keep still on his seat with the way he looks around as if this isn't his second home as of now.

“The detached retina right now is smaller than the one you had last time. Not that it makes the surgery less gruelling but at least, this is much _possible_ to save,” he tells Shoyo.

The patient chuckles at that. The light laugh dies into a small smile. And then, he stares at Kiyoomi.

Without the laugh. Without the beaming smile. Just a small arch of his lips and warm eyes.

They’re pretty. They’re beautiful.

“Your eyes are pretty,” he tells Shoyo honestly. “Now that you’ve stared at me straight, I can see it now clearly.”

Shoyo’s small smile falters for a split-second, or that’s just an imagination, because he’s suddenly chuckling again.

Boyish with his face and neck muscle rippling so little.

Kiyoomi tells himself he _didn’t_ just got swept on his feet because of that trivial detail.

“I’m trying to memorize people’s face as much as possible, Doc Sakusa. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to stare at something again after my surgery.”

A loud click of tongue cuts through the retina room.

“Tell me more about it after the surgery when you're all fine and breeze,” Atsumu snickers as he saunter towards Kiyoomi's table again.

Atsumu puts the tonometer device on the table and crosses his arms over his chest, leaning his hip on the table as he sends Shoyo teasing smirks.

“Now, tell me. How many moles Omi have on his face?”

Kiyoomi only has two moles on his forehead. But for those who are suffering from retinal detachment, dark spots dance on their sight; not fading, just there, waiting to get bigger as a person suffers from losing eyesight.

Shoyo is one of them.

“I see lots of dots,” the patient humors the doctors, as expected to be understanding. “So I’m not really sure.”

Kiyoomi frowns when Atsumu and Shoyo share a merry laugh. But soon subsides as he watch the eye smiles the patient has.

After some teasing and double checking that Shoyo is in normal blood pressure, Atsumu asks Kindaichi to send Shoyo to his assigned room at the forth floor of the ophthalmology building.

The door closes behind Atsumu, and Kiyoomi wish that he could've told Shoyo to smile more. And that after his surgery, he’ll see _only_ two dots on Kiyoomi’s face, instead of lots of black spots.

•

It happened like a director’s cut.

No. Like kamishibai.

It was as if the view is just stagnant, but Kiyoomi could hear lots of voices.

“What’s wrong?” He asks Koushi upon arriving at the operating area, surgical mask on his left hand. “Why did they bring Hinata again here? Didn’t he have his surgery yesterday?”

Koushi is frantic, but with practiced moves of a professional doctor, he faces Kiyoomi from the glass door separating the surgery rooms to the operation area.

“He was complaining since this morning that his eyes hurts, and his guardian, friend, I don’t know who he is, got mad at us this morning. He begged us to check his friend’s eyes to make sure nothing’s wrong,” Koushi explains.

Wakatoshi walks towards them, hurriedly and motions for them to stand aside. Koushi pulls Kiyoomi to enter the glass door and they settle on the corner.

“Kageyama’s a practiced optometrist,” Kiyoomi tells Koushi, as if that will answer why Kageyama made a scene this morning.

“I see,” Koushi mumbles under his breath. “Thanks, God.”

Kiyoomi still doesn’t have any idea what’s happening. All he knows is something went wrong.

Wakatoshi comes out of the surgery room, and for the first time, he looks like he's panicking.

“What’s wrong?” Kiyoomi asks.

Instead, Wakatoshi turns to Koushi. “Canula. One 14 or 16. And another one in 27. Please.”

Koushi leaves without a word, almost running towards the exit to presumably take the necessities from the neurology building.

“Why do you need it? Are you taking out the silicon liquid? Something went wrong?” He asks Wakatoshi who is busy changing his surgical mask.

Kiyoomi turns around when he hears the surgery room's door opening. It's Atsumu, sweats on his forehead are sand size.

“Tonometer. Device. Please. Someone –”

Kiyoomi rushes towards Atsumu and gives his handy tonometer to him.

Who the fuck brings tonometer at the surgery room?

He doesn’t need to ask. Wakatoshi answered that for him.

“Hinata’s eye pressure went up to 40 this morning. His friend is so mad.”

_40\. Fucking 40._

“He’s a fucking optometrist, Wakatoshi,” Kiyoomi snaps at the doctor. “ _Of course_ , he knew something was wrong.”

Kiyoomi tries to calm himself. This _can’t_ be happening.

The other doctor didn’t comment on his sudden outburst, and at that, Kiyoomi is thankful.

Koushi comes back and runs straight to the surgery room.

Kiyoomi thought Koushi would go out, would talk to him a bit, waiting for another task to do outside because there’s too much humidity inside the room especially the circumstances.

But what he hears is shouting, or better words, Daichi commanding for the doctors to do something.

“What the fuck is happening?!” Kiyoomi asks himself rather loud.

And he can’t just stand here.

He runs towards the surgery room door, but Chikara halts from doing so.

“Chikara–”

“Let the assigned doctors handle it,” the other doctor tells him. “We can’t frustrate them more. There’s a patient’s life at stake.”

_What? What life at stake?_

The door burst open again. Atsumu shouts for the assistants to set the _excimer laser._

“ _What_..”

Kiyoomi blinks his eyes. And he can’t hear anything anymore.

There are noises, but they sound so distant.

_What?_

He hears Koushi telling them about above 60 something.

What _is_ above 60?

What does 60 even means?

Minutes have passed and yet, nothing seems to happen. But it feels like everything is happening at once, is that even possible?

After feel like eternity, Atsumu comes out of the surgery room. He wipes his hands on his face, clearly forgotten about his face mask.

Kiyoomi waits for Atsumu to walk towards him. But it seems like Atsumu doesn’t know any place, right at that moment, to break down to for he drop on the floor; clutching his hair in tight grip.

Wakatoshi comes out then, eyes red and teary, barely holding everything back.

“Can someone–” from the open door, Daichi stands, voice breaking. “Can someone calls for Kageyama Tobio?”

Kindaichi did. And he comes back with the guardian in tow.

“I _fucking_ told a doctor to check his eye pressure last night! He was just dizzy, it must be around 26 only!” Kageyama snaps at them.

No one speaks.

“I fucking _knew_ it! I should have brought him to London!”

No one is speaking. And Kageyama seem like he won’t accept any alibi, any answer because partially, he’s right. He really is.

 _Silence_. Kiyoomi doesn’t have any idea how tight he is clutching onto Chikara’s forearms for support.

“Did he pass out?” Kageyama asks eventually.

Doctors shake their heads.

“At what.. how many mercury millimetre?” The guardian asks again. A lone tear falls from Tobio’s left eye.

“60,” Wakatoshi replies silently.

A chuckle comes out of Tobio’s throat. It turns into a whimper, and no one knows how are they going to comfort someone who knows what does 60 mercury millimetre is.

Eventually, the whimpers turn to sobs, and that’s when Koushi saunter towards Tobio to give the male a tight hug.

Kiyoomi doesn’t want to hear any of this. He doesn’t want to see any of this. And he doesn’t want to see how are they going to transfer Shoyo’s body.

So he push Chikara away slightly, going away and walk pass the crying doctors.

The exit route seems like a long treck. And when he reached it, just then Kiyoomi notice how tight his chest feels.

How tight it feels from lack of air yet feels too large and tight from too much oxygen.

 _Nothing_ makes sense.

“ _Fucking 60_..” He mutters to himself. “ _How_..”

Koushi stops upon seeing him, and he seem like he wants to say something. He also look like he finished crying, but still sniffling.

Kiyoomi doesn’t spare the doctor any glance. But he ask him anyway.

“What is it?”

Koushi gulps and blink away some tears.

“Shoyo _said_.. He said he was _looking forward_.. to see you with _only two moles_..”

Kiyoomi barks a laugh.

He fucking laugh as tears stream down his face.

“Yes! _Two moles!_ ” He cries with a laugh. “That’s right!”

As Kiyoomi drops, wall behind him not too strong to lend something to lean on, Koushi sush the onlookers walking by, wants nothing but for Kiyoomi to cry his heart out.

And Kiyoomi does. He _fucking_ does.


End file.
